EU Migration policy after the Arab Spring: The pitfalls of Home Affairs Diplomacy

Following the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the EU declared its intention to strengthen its external migration policy by setting up “mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries in North Africa – the so-called ‘Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security’ – now placed at the centre of the EU’s renewed Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). Yet, with negotiations on the establishment of Mobility Partnerships now well underway between the EU and certain Southern Mediterranean countries, the current contours of the EU’s external dimensions of migration policy continue to be primarily insecurity, (im)mobility and conditionality driven.

Reforms are needed, and the question is whether migration can help address these issues. It can, but only if the European economies are capable of growing enough to create the jobs, meaning that migrants can be integrated into the labour market and thus contribute to financing the welfare system. This will pose challenges as the countries with a population surplus are also those countries which have revealed to be difficult to integrate . This calls for a change – and a drastic improvement – in Europe’s integration policies, including not only a public debate about the benefits, or necessity, of migration and integration, but also a series of Europe-wide initiatives.

Following the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the EU declared its intention to strengthen its external migration policy by setting up “mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries in North Africa – the so-called ‘Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security’ – now placed at the centre of the EU’s renewed Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). Yet, with negotiations on the establishment of Mobility Partnerships now well underway between the EU and certain Southern Mediterranean countries, the current contours of the EU’s external dimensions of migration policy continue to be primarily insecurity, (im)mobility and conditionality driven.

This article seeks to explain the reasons behind the EU’s migration policy responses towards the Southern Mediterranean region from the perspective of the EU’s institutional setting: how do the key actors in this policy domain and their institutional relations drive and shape the EU’s external migration policies? It finds an institutional setting beset by struggles for autonomy and authority to control the policy agenda within the GAMM. Despite the application of the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of a European External Action Service (EEAS), an ever-expanding “Home Affairs diplomacy”, propounded by the Commission’s DG Home, certain EU agencies such as Frontex and the working structures of the Council, continue to dominate policy formulation on the external dimensions of EU migration policies.